Under the program, a group of military members, civilian employees and industry representatives traveled to missile bases in Global Strike Command to speak with junior officers and enlisted airmen about their workload, leadership and family issues. Preliminary recommendations focus on ways to increase incentive pay, and improve base infrastructure and accolades for airmen in the community. “Quick look action teams” formed following the review are finalizing their recommendations to Air Force leaders, which are expected within weeks.

In short, we find no evidence that historical joint aircraft programs have saved money. We also find that joint aircraft programs have obliged the services to accept unwelcome design compromises, have contributed to the shrinking of the military aircraft industrial base, and might have heightened the strategic and operational risks for the services and their pilots. Consequently, unless the participating services have identical and stable requirements, the Defense Department should avoid taking a joint approach to acquiring future fighter and other complex aircraft.

The Thunderbirds, grounded last spring by sequester-driven budget cuts, will be back in the air in 2014. The Thunderbirds schedule will begin New Year’s Day with a flyover at the Rose Bowl Parade in Los Angeles, followed by a year of airshows and flyovers across the country.

Maj. Gen. Michael Carey is being removed from command of the 20th Air Force, which is responsible for three wings of intercontinental ballistic missiles — a total of 450 missiles at three bases across the country.

Judicial Watch announced today that it has obtained educational materials from the Department of Defense (DOD) depicting conservative organizations as “hate groups” and advising students to be aware that “many extremists will talk of individual liberties, states’ rights, and how to make the world a better place.” The documents repeatedly cite the leftwing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a resource for identifying “hate groups.”

With its range and loiter time, however, MALD lends itself to other uses as well. One obvious use is to install radar jamming equipment, instead of radar reflecting equipment. The resulting system can add realism to an incoming wave of MALD decoys while neutralizing specific threats, or fly ahead on a mission of its own. The “MALD-J” electronics will have to be powerful enough to be useful, however, while remaining small and light enough to fit into a 300 pound MALD decoy.

…earlier this month, the Army issued a stop-work order — one step away from termination — to the drone’s developer Boeing. The reason? A high “probability of continued technical and schedule delays,” costs and risks that have “increased so significantly that program continuation is no longer in the best interest of the government,” said Donna Hightower, the Army’s acting product manager for unmanned aerial systems modernization.

Boeing plans to start building components for the first Air Force KC-46A tanker this fall and is looking to begin assembling the first aircraft one year from now.

The Pentagon’s KC-46A selected acquisition report, a document that provides extensive details of the program’s cost and performance, said the company projects the tanker development phase to cost $5.1 billion, which is $300 million above the Defense Department’s $4.8 billion contract ceiling price.

Boeing said Monday that the 28-minute flight of the Phantom Eye began at 6:22 a.m. Friday. The aircraft reached an altitude of 4,080 feet and a cruising speed of 62 knots before landing at the California desert base.

The Phantom Eye’s size means the drone can be loaded up with a whopping 450 lbs. of sensors and cameras — which will come in handy for toting the military’s forthcoming spy gear, like Gorgon Stare, designed to spy on “city-size” areas, or the Army’s ARGUS sensor, which collects the equivalent of 79.8 years of video footage each day. Combine that capacity with a lengthy loiter time, and you’ve got a high-flying spy system that can peek on entire cities for days at a time.